… By 1933 he was calling Stalin and Mussolini “the most responsible statesmen in Europe”

… He applauded his [Stalin’s] annexation of Finland, recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize …

… Shaw’s view after he spent nine days in Russia in 1931 … congratulated slave-labourers on their public-spiritedness, said he would settle “in the most fortunate country on earth” if he were younger and, in a hall later used for show trials, declared he would die happy now he knew that the communist system could “save mankind from complete anarchy and ruin”.

… In October 1939 he published an article urging Britain and France to make peace with Germany, suggesting that Churchillism be abolished before Hitlerism and declaring that “we should cease railing at our own creation” and recognise the ability with which the Führer had undone “our wicked work” at Versailles.

… as late as 1942 that the Führer was “a remarkable fellow” who had taken “the courage of his convictions to a sublime height”.

… As late as 1938 Shaw wrote to Beatrice Webb: “I think we ought to tackle the Jewish question by admitting the right of the State to make eugenic experiments by weeding out any strains they think undesirable.” The result of those experiments was, of course, the Holocaust, in which Shaw always refused to believe.